Erosion
by pangloss
Summary: HD Slash. A clawfooted tub, hypnotic lotus, and a neatly executed splinching. Harry seeks help from an incarcerated Draco to scour his squalid Manor. Inept jailer, pampered prisoner, but in time habitual enmity begins to dissolve.
1. Detritus

_Detritus_

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, etc. copyright to J.K. Rowling.

Harry was still groping the doorknob when Narcissa detonated the Noble and Most Ancient Malfoy chandelier. Fifteen hundred crystal pendants combusted at once and greeted Harry with diaphanous precipitation. Tonks and Lupin conjured Shielding Charms, which bloomed above them like mushroom caps, but Harry was too late to deflect the detritus. He saw a flash of rainbow, and then the splinters embedded themselves, needle-sharp, in his upturned face.

Narcissa took this opportunity to vanish through a corridor, barefooted, manic, pale-legged, and wearing a white silk nightdress. Lupin and Tonks took off after her, dipping beneath an arch of carved laurels with Charlie Weasley in tow. His hand was a raw mass of chandelier slivers.

"We're down this way!" shouted Charlie. "Go look for Draco…" The voice died away. Ron and Hermione ascended the marble staircase, troubling the diatom frost that had settled there. "He'll probably be up here. Harry, this way."

Harry hesitated. A speck of crystal had caught in his eye. He cast a precautionary Shielding Charm--an effervescent umbrella--and turned his attention to extracting the thorn with his index finger. He tried rubbing, but the shard aggravated his cornea with its tapered little edge, and he began to weep. His cheeks were bleeding, his robes glimmered with jagged snow.

After a moment, Harry succeeded in crying the prism out, and looked up. The Malfoy entrance hall was deserted, save for a hysterical house elf and her levitating dust pan ("Lowly cleans the mess, but where will Young Master find a chandelier so ancient, so heavy with Pureblood--").

Harry saw a diamond footprint, sparkling toe pointed toward the staircase, and bolted in that direction.

…

Narcissa rounded a corner and concealed herself in the first available room. Cobwebby, velvet-dark, and crowded with backlit mahogany bookshelves, the room revealed itself as Lucius' discontinued study. Narcissa lowered to the floor and fitted her feliform body in the desk's leg-space, like a jewel into a hilt. A spider probed the far fingers of her left hand, a tentative forelimb against a polished nail. Narcissa ignored it.

"Sundry?" she whispered. Right hand fingered her wand; bare knees, jasmine-white, protruded in the darkness.

_Crack._

"Yes, Mistress?"

Narcissa nearly recoiled. A set of luminous orbs confronted her, just even with her crouching brow: Sundry, the practical elf. "Find Draco. Tell him to escape without me. I'll meet him outside the grounds on the other end--he knows where."

"Sundry will, Mistress, but--"

"Tell him he is not to Apparate. He'll never make it. He is to take a broom, or to slither out, however he may. The East-facing window on the third floor, if he can."

"Yes, Mistress."

Another whip crack sounded, and Narcissa was alone. She let the darkness settle, unfurl, disclose its sordid scent around her huddled form. She took a moment of pause to Disapparate. But then, by her foot, a gleam of moon. Her toes nudged against a silver cylinder, something dense: Lucius' emblazoned seal. A trifling heirloom, still edged with her husband's reticulated fingerprints. She reached out, purloined the little star.

"It came from in there," came Charlie's voice. Narcissa stilled her breath.

"Sounded like a whip--probably just a House Elf." Footfalls. "Wait, there's something under there. That shadow--"

Narcissa was stepping into the dark, lurching into unbeing and then--

"_Stupefy!"_

A jet of red light burst beneath the desk from the outside. Narcissa crumpled on the spot, hand still encasing the sterling seal.

…

"Hermione! Ron?" Harry shouted on the second floor landing. The hall was all tiled, glossed surfaces and reflected tracts of moonbeam, but no acoustics mirrored Harry's voice. The arches swallowed his echo.

But then, distantly, "Harry! We're on the third floor!"

"Stay there!" he answered back. The corridor eyed him in disapproval. "I'll meet you!"

Harry rejoined the flock in what resembled a florid trophy room, or a gold-speckled sitting room. The couches and armchairs were of pearly, dawn-colored satin, and the windows faced South. The trio scoured the corners and crevices with three illuminated wands, to no avail. They moved on.

Next door, a guest bedroom. Burgundy sheets, bereaved fireplace, shadowy mural. Harry backed out the door first, refocused his light on the next room. Something nacreous flitted in the distance.

"Guys!" Harry whispered into the bedroom. "I think--over there." He pointed, and jogged towards the skittering flicker. A human form slammed a door on the eastern wall, and Harry accelerated.

"Malfoy!" Harry couldn't curb his velocity and slammed against the door. "_Alohomora! _Now!" The bolt readjusted, slid into place, and Harry glided into the darkness.

It was a windowless bathroom, full of mirrors. A tremulous light swerved in the adjoining room, presumably attached to an uncertain pallid hand--a hand which at once fumbled with wand and broom and window latch. Harry made move to span the tiles, but a hard, cold, fervent obstruction suddenly pounced at him with its shadowy bulk. Harry reeled into a mirror and marred its silver with his sweat-slick face.

_What the hell was that? _

The thing reared back and struck again, a stubby-legged charger. Harry's knees and shins throbbed in pain (the attacker was only waist-high, but had tremendous girth).

"_Impedimenta!" _Harry cried. The beast slowed, stopped. A claw-footed bathtub. A Noble and Most Ancient Malfoy bathroom fixture.

Harry slid past the open doorway--umber, gaping mouth--to dodge a Stunning Spell. Malfoy, wrapped in pearl-sheened, draping pajamas and a dark cloak, was straddling a broom and pawing at the windowsill. A few far-flung curses spilled from his ill-aimed wand.

"Malfoy, get away from the window," Harry commanded. A futile, but unconscious appeal.

"Fuck off, Potter! Go join your old codger underground. _Fractis fenestram!" _The pane shattered, a gust of effluvium brushed back Harry's hair. He heard Hermione gasp behind him.

Before Malfoy could kick off and away, a deft "_Accio _broom!" ripped the Nimbus from his protesting knees. Malfoy's eyes pored into the night, weighed the threat of Harry Potter against the inviting thorny coppice three stories below. His feet were bare, Harry noticed.

He seemed livid, bewitched; irises clung to solanaceous night. He raised his wand.

"_Stupefy!" _A red spray erupted over Harry's shoulder, aimed squarely between Malfoy's clavicles. Harry had a fleeting vision of Draco free-falling backward, a buoyant petal, through the window's open mouth.

But there was no Malfoy.

"What? I thought I had him!" Ron expostulated.

"He must've Disapparated," said Harry, and lowered his wand.

Hermione's eyes fixed on the with windowsill, as though an after-image of Draco still lingered there. An incredulous quiver stirred her underlip. "No, he didn't. Not quite."

Harry and Ron followed her gaze, and there, recumbent on the carpet, like a limpid dove, lay a severed hand. Beside it, with aristocratic self-importance, sniffed Draco's well-formed nose. A long, dry bone joined the coterie ("a femur," Hermione said), as well as three pretty ivory ribs struck from a pretty chest.

"Blimey. He splinched himself," Ron said after a moment. A long pause followed. "Well shit, what do we do now?"

Harry tried to imagine one of Draco's curving limbs, long, lithe, with a pellucid blond sheen dappling the outside, missing its upper bone. "I guess," he coughed, "we pick these up and look for the rest of him. He can't've gone far."

"First," Hermione said briskly, "I suggest we find Lupin." She pulled the cloak off her shoulders, and, one by one, Harry placed the mangled pieces of Draco in its cotton cradle.

…

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione returned to the entrance hall, the others waited with a limp, lirial Narcissa. Out of respect, Tonks had spared her the indignity of a Mobilicorpus Charm and levitated her instead; now, she lolled to the rhythm of a dreamy current.

Harry spoke up. "Lupin, we've--um--we've found Draco. He sort of, well, he partly got away."

"Partly?" Three pairs of eyes shared one inquiring glance.

"Most of him got away," Ron added.

"He splinched himself," said Harry finally. Unfolding the cloak, he proffered the remaining Malfoy pieces. "We don't know where the rest of him's gone."

"Outside, probably," Hermione conjectured.

"If we gets away, we can always ransom his body parts," Ron said with a quirk of the mouth. "I've always wanted him ripped to pieces… I just figured I'd be the one to do it."

Lupin considered the Draconian fragments. "We could try summoning him. With any luck, the rest of him will be in one piece."

"Can you fix the splinching?" Hermione asked.

"Tonks probably could." Lupin cast a moony eye at scowling Nymphadora.

Harry peered down at the pathetic, detached palm in the cloak-basin. A spliced wing. He drew his wand and murmured, "_Accio _Draco Malfoy."

There was a pause, a collectively held breath, and then a low moan issued from somewhere, increasing steadily in pitch and volume. Draco appeared, noseless, one-handed, as though being dragged backwards by the collar of his robes. His bare heels dug vainly into the floor, one leg longer and more flaccid than the other.

"Fucking Potter," he growled, collapsing on the floor in a boneless heap. He drew his remaining hand over the flat stump where his nostrils formerly flared and waited--uncooperative, but unresisting. "What have you done to my fucking mother?"

"She'll be fine, Draco, she's only been stunned," Tonks supplied, approaching him. "If you'll hold still, I can put you back together. We've got your nose here, and the rest of you. At least, I think so. Any internal organs missing?" Tonks cast a glimpse at Harry. Malfoy groaned. "If that's it, shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

Lupin spoke calmly. "When she's done, we're taking you back with us. You and your mother have a few questions that need answering, and a couple of trinkets we'd like to have back."


	2. Ash

_Ash_

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, etc., copyright to J.K. Rowling.

Without Malfoy, the Manor began to crumble and ferment, like a ribcage bereft of its palpitating heart.

The next morning, Harry's first footfall drew a seismic response; the parquet tiles bucked their varnished backs, windows snapped out of their casings and committed noble suicide, Harry's claw-footed tub joined its fellows and stampeded the entrance hall. Engraved silver serpents slithered off the candlesticks and sunned their backs on stair rails. The carved laurel tree in the archway had gone to seed, and rosewood saplings began to sprout and wave their russet leaves with an impossible wind. Even the roof shingles appeared to malinger and squirm.

"Draco's the last of the line," Lupin explained in the Malfoy kitchen, the only room still safe to inhabit. He, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Tonks had all perched on an outcropping of fireplace for a calm moment. "Now that he's been captured, there's no Malfoy blood under the roof to keep it alive. It's collapsing. The foundations are eroding away."

Harry spoke up. "We've got to search it before it falls completely. Borgin said the Hufflepuff cup was delivered here. Narcissa must've hidden it--"

"But she's not talking," Hermione reminded him.

"It's got to be on the grounds somewhere. If we could keep the house from expelling us for a few days, we could find it. Then that's one Horcrux down."

"And how do we do that?" Ron countered. "I'm not importing that little git back into this house. He knows the place too well. Might escape through a secret passage."

Hermione sighed, "We'd have to keep him knocked out the whole time, or tied up."

Harry plucked a vagrant crystal sliver from the hem of his robe. "It could be done," he said unto the spiny quartz. "We could keep him in a room without windows, one of us on guard at all times, tied up."

"Isn't that a little--" Hermione combed her mind for the right word, a look of discomfiture coloring her face. Her left hand bore a set of fang marks between index finger and thumb, and a few abrasions flushed her auburn brow. "Seems a little inhumane." Politeness had sustained Hermione's bite; an ornamental cobra doorknocker spit out its brass ring in time to lunge for her outstretched hand.

Lupin, spread supine on the hearth, exhaled softly. "It might be best, actually. Not tie him up--we can hold him better with magic--but to keep him here. He might be more comfortable in his house, and then he can dismiss the House Elves." (Lowly and Sundry had refused, on any terms, to abandon their moribund mansion. Sequacious Sundry had spent the morning delivering steaming teacups to the a reluctant Order while Lowly lapped up rubble with a broom.)

Tonks's hair flashed silver. "But that means extra work. I don't think anybody want to spend their time babysitting a Pureblood brat."

"Amen," muttered Ron into his sleeve.

Hermione, glassy-eyed, stroked her knee with her uninjured hand. "He might be able to help us. He knows where the hiding places are and how to get in. He might even know where the cup is."

"But he wouldn't tell," Harry said. A gargoyle's powerful right hook had left an orchidaceous bruise on his cheek, and five fresh scratches jeweled his neck--the neat handiwork of a roaming pride of Bengal cats. (The brutes weren't overtly aggressive, but they piled themselves into languid, gold-banded puddles wherever work was being done. Their affinity for unarmored shoulders grew tiresome; they predated on naked wrists, elbows, or any honey-colored stripes of flesh that peeked from a slouching sleeve or cuff. Their shrieks had an intolerable, ear-splitting effect, and behind those ivory chops nestled pink, bifurcated tongues. At present, one warm amber Bengal was investigating Ron's outstretched ankle.)

"He might. We've got some pretty potent leverage. The Ministry doesn't know we've got him yet. He's completely at our mercy."

"_And _we've got Narcissa," Tonks added. "That's got to sway him a bit."

Ron objected. "Yeah, but how do we keep him from Disapparating like he did last time, or tipping somebody off?"

"Doubt he'll try to Disapparate. I think he's learned his lesson from that one," Lupin suppressed a smile. "So long as we hold him in a locked room with only one door, and--I'm sorry, Hermione--limit his movement, I think it'll be fine. He's not that resourceful, really, when it comes down to it."

"No, he's not," Ron agreed. "Rather _stupid_, when it comes down to it. Bit _inbred_, when it comes down to it." His pied beastie sniffed with disdain.

"What d'you think, Harry?" said Tonks. "Should we lug him back here, shut him in a broom closet, and carry on?"

"Well, I guess--" Harry began, but the chimney interjected with a fit of sneezing. Midnight fog billowed out of the flue and settled over Lupin's face and torso like a sprinkled pall. The whole room took on a murky cast.

"Bless you!" called Hermione.

"Lovely," Lupin intoned, batting dust from his eyelids. "Well, what think you, Harry Potter? Shall we extend Mr. Malfoy an invitation?"

"I suppose so."

…

Harry found Draco in a familiar room. The walls were greenish, almost lichen-tinged, with a quaint antique luster. When the light glanced the right way, a few baroque-organic strokes gave them the semblance of an ivy plant inching tendrils up an olive-drab fence. On the far wall, a pair of heavy velvet drapes stunted the windows--the stern fir sentries in this morbid thicket.

Sirius's drawing room, Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. The genealogical tapestry still hung with its twining veins and dappling of char-marks: "Toujours Pur." A makeshift cot and a set of second-hand robes lay in a far corner, both apparently unused.

Draco languished by the left wall, blond head supported on the lip of the sofa, lengthening his pale legs toward the tapestry. He was still wearing his pajamas from two days before. His whole tableau radiated indolence, unseen fetters, a kind of heavy-hearted fatalism. Eyelids hung open, only because he wouldn't shut them, and twin irises investigated the peak of a lurid foot. His hands dipped in the carpet, searching for fibrous roots.

"Malfoy," Harry said, lingering by the doorframe. "I'm supposed to tell you, we're moving you this afternoon. Soon…probably within the hour. We're taking you with us to Malfoy Manor." Tonks had locked the door behind him, the windows and chimney were sealed by magic. A jade cage. "You'll be bound, of course. And we can't put you in a room with windows, but you'll be home."

Draco studied the wall, its burnished vines, the Pureblood yew.

"Um… but I'm supposed to warn you, we've decided the smoothest way to get there is by Portkey, and we can't just trust you not to run off as soon as your feet hit the ground, so we're knocking you out for the journey." A pause. "When they come in, they'll stun you, and we'll Enervate you once you're back in your rotting mansion."

Malfoy's eyes continued to climb their genealogical trellis, but his lips quirked. Inside, stalagmic and stalactic canines pinched at a sore spot on the satiny lining of his mouth. On the Noble and Most Ancient arbor, "Lucius Malfoy-Narcissa Black" begat a lone "Draco Malfoy," tied with a gold threat umbilical cord.

"What's the matter, Malfoy?" Harry said finally. "Can't get enough of your own name? You'd think after years of seeing it on Malfoy crests and detention slips and the lining of your robes, that you'd be sick of it."

Receiving no response, Harry scrutinized the tapestry. "I've learned quite a bit about you from this rag--you're related to a Muggle-born, for one." He moved forward, placed a hand on the spine of the sofa. "By marriage, of course, but your cousin Tonks is a full out half-blood. Ugly scar that must leave on the family tree, huh?" The burn mark was clear enough. "For all that shit you dump on the Weasleys, I fancy they're purer than your lot."

Draco remained unfazed, entirely reticent. Harry took another jab. "Speaking of family, your father's got no clue where you and Narcissa went. The _Daily Prophet_'s reporting your disappearance and telling people the house has vanished right along with you." Draco looked around, interested, but unconcerned. An iron tang suffused the sore spot in his mouth. Blood, maybe.

"What's it been, Draco? Barely year since he was captured, and you've already gone and got yourself caught. Maybe you'll share a cell in Azkaban before the year's up."

The words tasted bitter, a little foreign to his tongue. Harry watched Draco reject the bait; he stiffened, thawed, and turned his moon face back to the leafy wall. His blond pate had a cornsilk glow, though it was dirty, and a naive cowlick softened his sleek crown.

_There really is a rift_, Harry thought. A remorseful throb stayed his jaw at the joint. Why provoke him when he's spent three solitary days in a fatigue-colored room? Harry wended his way around the sofa and stood so he faced, distantly, a pointed blue-blood nose.

"I'm sorry I said that. It was pointless," he sighed. "I guess we're too old for this." Draco's fingers stopped probing the sorrel carpet. "I'll level with you. We need you at Malfoy Manor--the grounds are starting to implode, the whole house is crumbling from the inside out. We're trying to search the place and everything's either in disrepair or outright hostile. I got punched by a gargoyle, your doorknocker bit Hermione…Lupin's got a bad burn from a doorknob, we can't even _find _Mundungus."

Draco's eyes met Harry's for the first time, though they unveiled nothing.

"Oh, and tell me, Malfoy, does your mother keep cats? 'Cause a whole bunch of gold ones keep leaping off the banisters and trying to claw our eyes out." A flicker--no more than a flicker, but a flicker--of mirth crept into Draco's expression. "Lupin says it started because no Malfoy blood's under the roof, and I'm inclined to believe him. It's probably some kind of ancient, dynastic magic. Figures, for your clan. We're hoping when you come back, the magic will reverse itself, or at least, stop."

Draco's eyes had an impish twinge to them; malevolent, but comely; high-arched, a little sweep of opalescence. Harry wondered if his feet were cold.

"Also, we're looking for something, and Hermione thought you could help us find it." His nose produced a sibilant--perhaps spiteful--exhale. "Not that you _would_, but you could. If we can induce you to do it…. I suppose we tried already, with the Veritaserum."

Around the time Harry was receiving a five-clawed laceration from a renegade Bengal, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Charlie Weasley had administered the truth potion to rope-bound Draco. Malfoy, it turned out, could offer no fresh information as to Voldemort's whereabouts or activities; he'd been under house-arrest for the past month at least. Similarly, knew nothing of a Hufflepuff cup or silver locket, though he'd suggested a few heirloom-rich veins to search. "The trapdoor under the drawing room floor" had been located, but locked with a trickily enchanted mechanism which Lupin had yet to decipher. Meanwhile, "the catacombs" remained undiscovered.

"Just in general, helping us would be to your advantage. We still haven't decided what to do with you when we're done with the Manor." Rapt, sphinx-faced Draco said nothing. "Oh, and finally, I guess, we need you to dismiss the House Elves. They've been making a nuisance of themselves since we started; they'd rather bleed themselves out over the flagstones than leave…."

"Will my mother be there?"

"Lowly's just like Kreacher--won't even look at the blood traitors. But that Sundry's a regular attention whore. This morning, she--wait, what?"

"I said, will Narcissa be joining us at Malfoy Manor?"

Harry hesitated, remembering Lupin's admonitions: _"Don't tell Draco we're releasing his mother. As far as he's concerned, we're keeping her in spite of her innocence. She's collateral…to prevent him from making any risky choices." _Narcissa would wake up the next morning in Diagon Alley wearing shabby robes and sporting a modified memory. _"But Draco is not to know." _Harry could recall with bitter accuracy another occasion which flaunted false collateral and lured desperate child. He wondered what Sirius would think of their deceptive stratagem.

"Your mother's been released," Harry admitted. Perhaps Lupin was biting his lip outside the door. C'est la vie. "We wiped her memory and left her in a Leaky Cauldron room this afternoon. She'll be fine, but we've cast a concealment spell on the Manor. She won't be able to find you."

"Did you at least tell her how I am? That I'm all right?" Malfoy tore at his ankle with a set of listless talons.

Harry's eyes prowled the floor. "I can't say, I wasn't there. I suppose we did."

"I bet they warned you not to tell me that," Draco suddenly cut in, with glib ferocity. " 'Keep him in the dark, he'll break easily,' right, Potter? 'Make him think he's got to save his captive mum.'" A cynical, lupine smile distorted his mouth. "I wouldn't have protected her, so you know."

Harry took a step back. "Right. You don't give a shit, that's why you asked about her first thing."

"It's not about indifference. My silence is more important than her safety is all."

"That's a sick philosophy and you know it. You don't even believe it."

"The hell I don't. So, tell me, Potter, now that you've given the leverage away, what's the tactic now? Torture?"

"We don't need a tactic, all we need is your blood, and we can get that without asking." An eye of fuchsia began to shade Harry's cheekbones . "Besides, lying isn't a major tactical play of ours. We find the truth works better than a lot of strategic lies."

"For your bleeding heart, maybe." A glacial glint revived itself on Draco's profile. "But I bet outside they're not so keen on keeping me informed. They'll have to bring out the thumbscrews now."

"I'll tell you what I damn well please, Malfoy, I--"

"Or is staying in this sorry museum enough? God, Potter, you're so sentimental. The whole damn house stinks of wet dog, and you probably keep it that way on purpose. I bet you and Sirius had a good romp in here before he got himself--ah!"

Harry's palm, acting as retributive stinger, had delivered a rough slap to his vivid mouth. Draco recoiled, still cornered by a fawn sofa, and rubbed his smarting jaw with the cold heel of his hand.

"I--" Harry's red right hand fisted. He attempted to suffocate it in a shady pocket.

"You what?"

Harry retreated to the doorway, called to an unseen henchman: "We're done." The bolt adjusted; Charlie and Tonks, with wands bared like two supple thorns, stepped in. "Take him." Harry backed towards the window.

Tonks began to explain. "Malfoy, hold still, we're going to try to--"

"Just do it," Draco commanded. His voice was guttering out.

"_Stupefy_." The red gust hit him on the satin sternum, and his form collapsed. Charlie reangled his wand. "Mobili--"

"Wait a second, Charlie." Harry interrupted. "Do a Switching Spell first--make him put on these robes." Weasley obliged, and the two ghosted a limp Draco through the doorway.

Harry paused on his way out--the little writing desk in the corner, former home to a boggart, was spread with an assortment of quills and half-written letters. All unsent. Malfoy's drafts, balled into tight little parchment fists, waited patiently for disclosure or disposal on the table's polished epidermis. Harry selected a rejected letter, smoothed it with his still-red palm:

_Mother,_

_They say I can't see you, but I want you to know: I told them nothing. _A line crossed out. _Whatever they're searching for, I am perfectly certain they'll never find it. M.M.'s a labyrinth only we can navigate. Let them try._

_I don't know how long they plan to keep me, or where they intend to place me when they're through, but I am not afraid . I remain silent, solid, and reserved. _A heavy blot. _But if I could revise one thing, I wish I had spoken to you--at least once--in those last three weeks. We'll see each other again, no doubt, and I will bottle my regrets. Until then, I remain_

_Your son,_

The letter terminated, unsigned. Harry read the missive twice, replaced it on the desk, and in a quick motion lit all the drafts on fire with his wand-tip. Subduing another penitent throb, he walked away while the ashes still weakly smoldered.


End file.
